High Res - A SCANNER DARKLY exclusive images hit right here at AICN!

Hey folks, Harry here... When I saw that image from Premiere Magazine show up online, I was sort of let down. Not by the image, but that the first image was a pixel-y low res shot - when I knew good and well that the artists working here in Austin on Linklater's production of Phillip K Dick's A SCANNER DARKLY... well, it just wasn't going to do the film any justice.

So I contacted Linklater and the producer of the film, Tommy Pallotta and asked if we could have a higher resolution image of the Premiere image. Instead, they wanted to give me 3!

These 3 images are grabs from the trailer which looks like WARNER INDEPENDENT is attaching to WB's CONSTANTINE in February! More reason to see that film, eh? Like you needed any.

Anyway, just got off the horn with Tommy and as is revealed from the images... he told me that they're going for a far more realistic look for the animation, than they did on A WAKING LIFE. The reason is obvious. On that film, the movie was episodic and lent itself to a variety of freeform styles that the artists had a freedom to explore. Here, he says there's far more thought and effort going into designing the scenes and frankly, they're designing much of the film in animation. Also, most of the animators for this project are coming out of the world of illustration and are graphic novel artists - so what we'll eventually get when it is done will be the closest thing we're likely to get to a living graphic novel telling of A SCANNER DARKLY... and that... that's way cool.

Ugh - I've seen some fucking awesome concepts for the animated A Scanner Darkly movie - and Waking Life style is the most fucking pathetic cop-out I've ever seen. It's absolutely the WRONG look for this. It feels cheap, indie, unprofessional, and way too 'colorful' for the opressive mood of the book. Sorry Harry - Hollywood fucked this one up. Not using Charlie Kaufman's script should have been enough to drive that home - but this only verifys it. I am no longer looking forward to this. Welcome to the CARE Factory. We produce, package, and distribute CARE. Currently, we are all out of stock. -Ie, Fuck You, Hollywood.

I can see it now, "ooh it has animation, that means its part cartoon, I'm above it unless its funny like South Park...." Us film nerds are gonna have to come out in full force to support this when it hits. It is gonna be a trip, and I can't wait man.

comic artists or comic book artists ... say it with me people. Illustrators works better if you're trying to legitimize those titles without sounding suspect. Looks more anime that I would like though from those shots.

I'm a life long PKD obsessive - over the years i've read 'Scanner' countless times (along with many of Dick's other masterworks) and this shit looks fantastic! Who fucking cares if they didn't use Kaufman's script? I've no doubt whatsoever in Linklater's abilities. If anyone can pull this shit off, it's him.
I'm looking forward to a Phil Dick adaptation that's (for once) actually true to the source material.

Scanner is my favorite PKD novel, and I've read around 20 of them. And I've got no problems with these images. They reveal little of how good or bad the film will turn out. I don't know why people like Scrivener are so upset about it. Would you prefer the Ridley Scott style of Blade Runner, which despite its quality as a sci fi film, was a piss poor excuse for an adaptation? I'm just glad some big time director isn't doing it with an inflated budget. If you're so concerned with the look of the film then you're completely clueless about the novel itself. This film isn't very plot driven; it's character based, and there aren't going to be any cool set pieces. It's one of Dick's most heartbreaking novels (among many), and I know Linklater has the skill to get that feeling across. The medium is irrelevant. He could should shoot the thing on a fucking handicam for all I care. BTW, I downloaded and read Kaufman's screenplay, and it was good, but nothing that couldn't be matched or surpassed by someone else. He should just stick to his own PKD derivative screenplays, which were much better.

Great shots, gracias AICN. Only thing that worries me a bit about this otherwise beautiful project is Woody Harrelson; in an interview he clearly showed he didn't know wtf he was doing on the set, and imo he's a complete hack, bad actor, bad. But the again, I love Downey JR and Ryder enormously and even think Reeves will shine in this set-up, so what do I know, eh?

I agree with scrivener completely, Linklatter is such an over rated one trick pony it's not even funny, and I literally cringed when I heard he was connected to this project, especially when I heard he planned to carbon copy his previous effort Waking Life right over the top of it, which is just all wrong for what this should be. Biggest problem is this guy thinks of himself as an artiste, but he's only got one (rather lame) trick in his bag, and personally I would far rather had a real film director and story teller bring this adaptation to screen, not someone who never seemed to get over A-Ha's Wake On Me film clip from the eighties...

I thought it was called Take on me? Wait..it is, oh well who gives a shit? right,and Charlie Kaufman can Sunkey my Dunkey cause his scripts try to hard to give people a migrane....full of jokes that only he gets.I love movies that make you think after you leave the theater examples FIGHT CLUB,FRAILTY,SEVEN,not movies that make me think about flying to Hollywood and punching Kaufman in the throat. Oh well Happy Weekend Slap Nuts

I've never read the book, don't know the story, and don't particularly care about Linklater one way or the other. But these 3 or 4 images have got me excited about this project. If you must bitch, there's a Star Wars Talkback just a couple of articles below this one.

*lays out a package of double-stuffed oreos and some lotion on the troll trap*
Seriously, dear god, this is some jaw-dropping shit. This style us the absolute perfect way to capture the hallucinogenic, "heightened reality" feel of PKD's best novel. Anyone who is a true fan of the book must be drooling. I've read the first 2 pages of the script, but I stopped because I couldn't ruin any more. And in those 2 pages, Linklater TOTALLY NAILED PKD's humor. Linklater is a PKD fanboy at heart, he's clearly passionate, and this movie is going to FUCKING RULE YOU ALL.

Hollywood loves Dick for his high concept work, but they have yet to get his tone right. Mr. Dick was a seriously twisted and smart guy who wrote in kind. Yet nobody's tried to interject his paranoia and fear into any their film projects...until now, perhaps. Here's hoping they give us a truly insane version that will appeal not to a mass audience but to cinephiles and hardcore Dick-heads. May the aliens not invade your thoughts for another day.

I mean what the hell do you have to look forward to if your a avid reader of PKD,theres been at least five adaptations of his books/stories and not one of them has been anywhere close to any of the books(worse being Minority Report)ok some of the films have been good but representitive of PDK shit give me a break.....

Okay, number one, the last watchable film Linklater made was Dazed and Confused. That film, however fun it was, is miles from the brilliance of PKD's work. Number two, Kaufman was a great fit to write this, why abandon it? Number three, the Producer Team of Soderberg/Clooney guarantees a healthy dose of formulaic Hollywood garbage. Sure, Soderberg films are high art compared to any of the twelve Stiller movies that came out in 2004. It's still Hollywood garbage. Number four, just because Keanu, Winona, and Downey are always stoned, it doesn't mean they can act their way out of a paper bag. C'mon, I work with unpaid actors here that can do better on a cold read. Number five, the stupid, cheap software process they are calling animation is a joke.
I'll happily pass. An old Santo movie will prove to be more entertaining than this. Poor PKD. Hollywood needs to leave his work alone.

Waking Life was one of the most pathetic, self-absorbed excercises in undergraduate cod-philosophy I have ever had the displeasure of bearing witness to. The dialogue was terrible, like listening to someone paraphrase the opening chapter of "Sartre For Dummies" over and over again.

Insert ego: I HAVE RETURNED! Anyway, I find it interesting that no one (except castaway) has brought up the fact that he said, "there's far more thought and effort going into designing the scenes and frankly, they're designing much of the film in animation." In other words, it

1. GiftedInThePants: "for the simple fact that now Bob has a wife and child." Now, I might be wrong about this, but I seem to recall that he did in fact have a wife and kid in the book. He had divorced them or something, the standard all work and no play subplot, but yeah, I